Crash Truck Owner On Trial

Insurance Fraud Alleged

3 Testify

May 08, 2008|By KATIE MELONE; Courant Staff Writer

A police officer, an accident victim and a truck driver were the first witnesses to testify Wednesday at the start of the insurance fraud trial of David Wilcox, the owner of the dump truck involved in the deadly 2005 Avon Mountain crash.

He also faces manslaughter counts in the July 29, 2005, crash, which killed four people and injured 11. His trial on those counts has not yet been scheduled.

The second witness of the day, Jennifer Slade of East Granby, testified that she was driving her car east on Route 44 on the morning of July 29, 2005, when she noticed a dump truck coming toward her in the wrong lane on the mountain.

"That's what caught my eye - it was just this mass coming down the hill like a rocket," Slade testified in Superior Court in Hartford.

None of the relatives of those killed were in court Wednesday, but they are expected to attend Wilcox's manslaughter trial.

In the current trial, the state alleges that within 20 minutes of learning of the crash at the foot of Avon Mountain, Wilcox called his wife, Donna, and told her to get liability coverage for the truck restored.

Donna Wilcox then called the company's agent to have coverage restored, according to the state's allegations, without telling the agent the truck had crashed.

George W. Sherman Jr., a former driver for ACR who was headed to the same job site on July 29, 2005, as the truck that crashed, testified that Wilcox made the decisions at the company and assigned drivers to their routes.

"Anybody else?" asked the prosecutor, John Malone.

"No," Sherman replied.

Sherman also testified that after discovering the crash, minutes after it happened, he called Wilcox to inform him.

Donna R. Wilcox, 42, who faced a trial that was to start March 3, pleaded no contest on Feb. 29 to attempted first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny for her role in the immediate aftermath of the fiery crash. She has not been sentenced.

The couple was arrested in November 2005. David Wilcox was charged with manslaughter in July 2006.

Barbara Bongiovanni, 54, of Torrington; Maureen Edlund, 60, of Canton; and Paul A. "Chip" Stotler, 42, of New Hartford were killed in the crash, along with the truck driver, Abdulraheem Naafi, 41, of Hartford. Eleven people were injured, five of them seriously.

The trial is expected to last two or three weeks. Testimony is to resume today.